


Ropeburn

by Camfield



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bondage Gone Wrong, Less on the comfort, More on the Angst and Hurt, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rope Bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 12:49:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11714733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Camfield/pseuds/Camfield





	Ropeburn

He’d try it, he’d said. Try it because he knew his partner enjoyed it. Would do his best to give them what they wanted, but he’d mistaken just how much it’d pull him from the present, from the now, and into the past. Feeling the thin rope, too thin to be effective, wrapped around his wrists. Holding them together, the way that even though his left arm was no longer there it still could still sense the burn of fabric from where he was twined up. Hands above his head, secured loosely to the headboard...

Jesse gagged.

He’d tried, he had, but the feeling of ropes around his arms sent shivers up his spine, the bad kind, and had him trying hard to curl in on himself. Something he couldn’t do... because he was tied. Tied up. 

So he gagged.

Then retched, and retched again. Unable to bring his hands up to his face, his world closing in until it was dark, the safe place inside his mind that he’d always used before when they’d caught him. The soft place where he could imagine blankets full of clouds and hands touching him tenderly, caressing him instead of hurting him.

There are hands on him, and he gasps as he struggles. Eyes wild, unseeing but sure that they’ll break him again. Tear at him with pinpricks of pain that turn into knives, always hurting, always unable to move, to get away.

A sound comes out of his mouth, a keen, and Jesse McCree, a man nearly forty years old, rolls over just enough to throw up where he won’t aspirate it back into his lungs. Already anticipating the next bite into his skin, the hands that scoop up his mess and shove it back into his mouth. Shrinking from those hands that try to still him. Hands that seems so achingly familiar that it makes him keen again.

His body shakes, the sharp, acrid scent of urine tells him somewhere in the back of his mind that he’s pissed himself, but all he can focus on is being unable to move. Feels the nick of a knife on his arm and shrinks into himself. Skin too pale, breathing barely enough to keep him afloat from where he heaves in air and still can’t catch his breath. He doesn’t even notice that the ropes are gone until there’s a hand in his on his own chest, and when that slices through the fog he realizes that he’s not back in The Basement. Not covered in cuts and bruises, slices and torn flesh. The mess is there, but the bed is still soft. The voice against his ear gentle, and his heaving breath turns to silent sobs that wrack his body from head to toe. Whispering a garbled version of “I’m sorry” over and over again no matter how many times he’s reassured it isn’t his fault. He’d told them he might react badly, it isn’t his fault.

It’s okay.

But it isn’t.

It isn’t okay.

He can’t make it okay.

The sweat on his skin is thick and fear tinged, the soaked sheets acrid and yellow. He can’t stop his shaking even as he shoves himself off the bed to stumble to the bathroom. Slamming on the water and barely turning the dial to make it warm. Just letting the cold hit him until he’s teeth chattering, pink skin from scrubbing with hand that shook so much he kept dropping the soap. Only ceasing when the water is stopped for him, and looking up into concerned eyes to start heaving again. Tears and bile mixing around the drain as he hits his knees on porcelain and wraps arms around himself.

He isn’t okay.

But he can’t stop the tears, the terror, and as he kneels there he pisses again, ashamed and embarrassed and unable to move. Two seconds from shattering the tub with his grip, bleary eyes clouded with memory and red haze that paints targets on nothing and circles around his mind indefinitely.

He isn’t okay.

The hand on his back is gentle, but like ants crawling on his skin and he shakes it off with a whimper. 

He isn’t okay.

And he doesn’t know how to make himself be, either.


End file.
